Official Blog of YA Author Nova Ren Suma

I was talking to a coworker the other day and the town of Woodstock, NY, came up and I said, “You know that’s where I’m from, right?” But that’s a funny thing for me to say. Because, really, Woodstock is just the last place I lived with my family before I went off to college and my real life started. I went to high school there, but it’s not my hometown in the way other people have hometowns. My family has since moved away. There’s nothing there to go back to. So when E and I talk about what we’d do if my company had layoffs and if I lost my job—the only thing making it possible for us to stay in New York City, and also the only thing making it necessary for us to stay in New York City—we discuss where we’d go. Because we couldn’t stay here, though it breaks my heart to realize that. I love this city, but I have no family here either, no one to help us out. It would never occur to me to move “back” to Woodstock. I never felt truly at home there, though it was better than any of the other places where I lived. So the question is: Where would we go? Where is “back home”? And what do you do when you don’t have one?

I’ve never felt more at home than I do now, living in downtown Manhattan, a place where I know I don’t belong—I’m well aware—and yet I’ve been an impostor just enough to pull it off all these years. But I don’t think a place becomes “home” just because you walk the same streets every day, take the same shortcuts, stop at the same cafés, ride the same train. You have to belong there. And in my neighborhood, I walk around and think only rich people really belong here. Maybe the town where I went to college is more of a home—it would be maybe, if the college was open. Then again it’s in Ohio. How can Ohio be my home?

I guess I’ve never had an actual hometown—not the town where I was born, not the town where I lived as a toddler, as a young kid, not the one where we lived when I was in elementary school, not the one where I went to junior high, not the dark spot of a town where I spent the ninth grade, and not the last of the towns, not even that one. We moved enough as a kid that I never felt connected to any one place or house or town or group of people.

I guess the state of New York is my home, since it’s had me longer than any other. But will I cross the bridge to Queens and find my home there? Is it uptown, where I went to grad school? Is it upstate, the place I write about more than any other? Is it Woodstock after all?

I wish I knew. The economy is so bad right now that this is the time you want to fling yourself back there, to “home,” your fail-safe, the one place you can go when everything else crumbles. I heard two girls talking on the subway. They said if it gets really bad, if it’s impossible to keep up with the rent and the bills, they’ll just move back home to Chicago. And I sat there listening, because they were talking inches from me, and I thought, Chicago, will you take me? I wonder…

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4 thoughts on “Home?”

osloweJanuary 28, 2009 / 9:45 am

I know EXACTLY what yr talking about. I used to say “Home is where my shits at”, which I lifted from either Eireann or Cliffy. Then it became “home is where Bettie is at” and soon enough, “mi familia”.

But there is no geographic “home” for me and hasn’t been since I stopped living w/ my parents & went to college, leaning credence to that hoary old chestnut “you can’t go home again”

This is a viewpoint with which I can easily sympathize. I was born in Point Pleasant, NJ and wouldn’t return for over thirty years (and even then, only to pick up a birth certificate). I went to elementary school in Jersey, Middle School in NY, High School in PA and College in NY. I’ve moved well over thirty times. There is no other place out there (than where I live) that I could call “home”. Even when anybody asks where I’m from, I’m not sure how to answer.

ohJanuary 28, 2009 / 11:41 pm

Seems like it would be tough to go small town after Manhattan. All the BIg Apple energy is great, esp for writers and artists. You can participate in it if you want, or not, protected by anonymity. It’s so different in a small town. I have done both.
Now we live in St. Louis which is a city-that-acts-like-a-small-town. Great place. Very interesting. Compelling. Comfortable. I’d go nuts if I couldn’t find something that was open all night, just because or restaurants or all kindsof shopping. But this is not a walk-about town.
Fun to think about where to go though, right? Maye abroad?

It’s hard to find psychic home. And switching literal homes is a really soul-ripping thing–to find a new sanctuary, to find safety, can be daunting. But there is always a place out there for you. May you land safely in a beautiful and nurturing place.

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Nova Ren Suma:

Kind of weird, like my books. Author of the #1 New York Times bestselling THE WALLS AROUND US, now available from Algonquin in hardcover, ebook, paperback, and audio. Also wrote: 17 & GONE, IMAGINARY GIRLS, DANI NOIR (aka FADE OUT), and one day more weird things.

Teaches in the MFA program in Writing for Children & Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts.